WALLACE EDGAR: (1875-1932)

WALLACE EDGAR: (1875-1932) British writer of crime and adventure fiction who contributed an early draft of the screenplay to the horror monster film King Kong (1933). Autograph Manuscript Signed, Edgar Wallace, one page, 4to, Clarence Gate Gardens, London, n.d. (c.1913-21). Wallace writes an autobiographical text, with several corrections, in which he rejects the majesty of the seven seas in favour of the skies of London, ´My first thoughts feeling on seeing the sea was one of disappointment - it was the it was the first natural object I had seen that had no background. The sea means nothing to me – it is an anodyne which drugs rather than stimulates. I have never been able to work on shipboard or at the seaside. To me there is more wonder and majesty in a patch of starlit sky above London than in all the seven seas. And I know them all. To me The sea is just water – large
monotonous flats of grey or blue or yellow that only becomes interesting by when it they cross the shores of an interesting land. I don't hate the sea – I despise it.´. Rare in this form. Some very light, extremely minor age wear, VG

Wallace's pronounced dislike of the sea had a personal basis. At the age of fifteen he went to Grimsby and shipped as a boy aboard a steam trawler, an experience he later recalled in his 1926 autobiography People, describing the winter voyage in terms of gales, blizzards and freezing conditions; on returning to Grimsby, he abandoned the vessel and walked back to London.